Jason sighed. Groucho leered down at him. Say the secret word and win a hundred dollars, Bucko.
He regretted shouting at Hadewych. He didn’t know the facts. Maybe he’d overreacted. Ugh. He’d called Eliza’s friends “a couple of con artists from the psychic hotline.” Oh, she will love hearing that. Hadewych was probably repeating the conversation word for word from the back seat of the Mercedes. (Back seat? Nah. Hadewych always drives.) Jason would get a talking-to. Eliza rolled out the welcome mat, and Jason stepped in a pile of poodle shit.
He wanted to leave Sleepy Hollow. (What did he mean “it owns me”?) How would he convince Eliza? She’d bought a house. That was a serious expenditure of time and money; that was long hours listening to Debbie Flight gush, wire transfers of half a million dollars or more, titles, deeds, a hundred things to do and sign. She wouldn’t jump in the RV and head home just because he whined at her. No, Eliza was definitely “committed to the project.”
And eighty years old. She must intend to leave that house to Jason someday, and she never would have bought it if she didn’t think he would be grateful to have it from her. But the house gave him shivers.
That’s why he was sitting with Groucho when he could have been warm in the house. He didn’t want to be alone there. The rooms, somehow, were never what you expected, never how you remembered them from the day before, one square foot too many or too few, a little extra space behind the door or around a corner, just enough for something to be crouching there, watching you.
And it had shouted at him earlier.
Brom Brom Brom.
Shouted at him? Or for him? Or for someone else? Oh, come on. That’s stupid. He’d been honest when he’d said he didn’t believe in tarot cards and stuff. He did, once. After his parents died he became obsessed with the supernatural. But as he grew up he decided he preferred science. History, too. On the mirror of his bedroom he’d placed two pictures: one of Howard Carter and one of Carl Sagan. The first discovered King Tut’s tomb, and the second challenged Jason to question everything.
That morning Jason had experienced something strange. So he questioned it.
He’d imagined the shout, of course. Houses can’t shout. Maybe he had recognized the Van Brunt name from The Legend, even if on a subconscious level. Maybe he’d seen something in Eliza’s papers. Maybe it was a blind guess. He refused to believe he’d had a “paranormal experience.”
Except it had happened before.
Jason’s stomach flipped over. Someone pulled a stopper and sent his eggs and toast down down to goblin town.
He didn’t want to remember his friend Owen.
Owen with the brown paper bag.
In his last year of middle school, Jason had sprouted like climbing kudzu, growing almost nine inches and four shoe sizes. Already a lanky kid, he was verging on giraffe. This made him a target, and he was cut down mercilessly. He felt like a freak: awkward, inelegant, hands dangling, buying his size-seventeen sneaks off the internet. So he gravitated to his fellow freaks, and found Owen.
Owen was as horizontal as Jason was vertical. He wore suspenders that no bully could resist snapping, and he lugged his books as if protecting his navel from somebody’s fist. He was mild mannered, but enthusiastic as a puppy when you met him on his home turf of sci-fi and comics. He could quote almost every joke from old Mork and Mindy episodes, and was prone to mutter "shazbot" when he tripped on his shoelaces.
The two cleaved to each other, one short and fat, one tall and thin, as if they wanted to average out to one normally proportioned person. The lard and the scarecrow. Laurel and Hardy. Yes. A comedy team, full of quotes and quirks and pimply mirth. They took the show on the road as freshmen at Cony High School. But their great friendship ended abruptly just after Thanksgiving.
Eliza invited Owen over for the Thanksgiving meal. Owen nibbled some turkey, that’s all. He never ate much that Jason saw, which was surprising for his size. Maybe he binged late at night when no one was looking. Jason gorged on an enormous mound of stuffing and giblet gravy, potatoes and warm rolls. If old Ichabod possessed “the dilating power of an anaconda,” Jason had inherited it.
Afterwards, upstairs, they reverently slipped Jason’s Giant-Size X-Men #1 from its Mylar protector, drinking in the sweet aroma of browning paper and three-color process that signals only the best and rarest and most wonderful of collectibles. On one page, Professor X raised his fingers to his temples and rallied his X-Men, his psychic commands radiating from his bald head like waves off hot asphalt.
“I have psychic powers,” Owen blurted.
“I want Wolverine’s claws.” Jason was turning a page. “Snikt! Or – hey, get this! Get this! Lightsabers poking out the backs of my hands. Or even – ”
“No, no! I’m totally serious. I have psychic powers.”
“No you don’t.”
“I do.”
Jason laid the comic on the bedspread. He sighed. Owen could be such a spaz sometimes. “Okay,” he said, indulgently, “what number am I thinking of?” Jason closed his eyes, put his index fingers to his temples, and whistled like a flying saucer on a roller coaster.
“Stop. It doesn’t work that way.” Owen pulled Jason’s elbow down. He was grave-faced, earnest. “What I can do is called a psychic reading. Off an object. Like getting impressions. When the doorbell rings, if I put my hand on the knob, as soon as I do I know who's there.”
“It’s called looking through the peephole, moron.”
“Shut up! And when I touch the phone I know who’s calling.”
“I’m sure, Mister Bullshit from Bullshit Mountain.”
“Like my sister or my grandmother. I just know it’s them.”
Jason stretched and flopped back onto the floor, his arms splayed above his head. “Then prove it.”
“Okay. Give me something to do a reading on.”
“Here.” Jason rolled over and plucked a roll of socks from the closet floor. He lobbed it at Owen. The sock bounced off Owen’s head and under the desk.
“Gotcha!” Jason said.
“Something better than that.”
Jason sat up, annoyed.
“Fine,” he said, rummaging. He produced a single ancient cowboy boot, a man’s boot, snakeskin, its toes scuffed, mudded with long use. He set it down between them. “Read this.”
Owen scooted over to the boot. He closed his eyes, gathering himself, slowing his breathing. He made a low shamanic “Om” sound. Jason snickered and was shushed. Owen hovered his palms above the boot, warming them before a psychic campfire He laid hands on it, leaning into the thing.
Ten seconds passed. Jason realized he was holding his breath.
“Well?”
“I see a farm… and a man… and he’s wearing…”
“Boots. Duh.”
“Shh. He’s got a long pipe and a green jacket. And his name is… Hans.”
“Han Solo.”
“No. Hans with an S. He’s got a wagon and…”
Owen stopped, frowning. Jason made the ragged sound of a game show buzzer.
“Nope! You lose! This isn’t a farm boot, you idiot. It’s snakeskin! This was my dad’s. Andrew! Not Hans. Face it, you can’t do shit!” Jason tossed the boot onto the bed. He bolted upright, panicky, but it had missed the comic book. He fished for the Mylar wrapper and put The Precious away.
“You think you can do better?” said Owen.
“A blind man could.”
“Okay. You try.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Are you chicken?”
“Fine,” Jason snapped. Why did that old taunt always work? He slid the comic into a long white box, securing the lid on his collection.
“Okay,” said Owen, looking around. He snatched up a brown paper bag, spotted with grease, and dumped a few stale French fries into the trashcan. “I’ll put an object in this bag, and you try to guess what it is. Turn your back.”
Jason did, and heard a rustling behind his head.
Owen produced the bag. It was rounded with some object now. Jason reached for it.
“No, don’t touch yet. Just think. Try to imagine what’s inside.”
“Your lunch?” Jason sneered. But he closed his eyes and tried to imagine. He could hear Owen’s breathing. His friend always breathed through his mouth. Allergies. Jason’s nose itched. His brain grew bored with nothing to look at, and fragments of images swam in and out of his imagination.
“Strawberry,” he blurted.
Owen reached into the bag, producing a white bowl. Jason had eaten Frosted Flakes from it, about three days ago. A few stuck to it like little beige fish scales.
“See?” Jason said. “I lose. There’s no such thing as psychics.”
“No. Look here.”
Owen pointed. A design went around the sides of the bowl, a long string of vines and painted fruit. With strawberries.
“That’s…” Jason began, but didn’t know how to end the sentence.
“It’s cool. See? What did I tell you? Do it again.”
Jason closed his eyes. An image like daisies and sun and…
“Yellow.” He blurted after three seconds.
“Oh my god. Open your eyes.”
Owen held a bright yellow highlighter pen.
“I hadn’t even put it in the bag,” he said.
And so they went, for thirty minutes or more. A staple remover, a toy soldier, a sweat sock, a pencil. Jason never said precisely what was in the bag, but it was always close or related. He’d imagine a cockpit, and Owen would produce a game controller. He’d say “plate” and the object would be a CD. He made right angles with his pointer fingers, shrugging, only to have Owen pull out Eliza’s knitting needles. His friend became more and more enthusiastic, but Jason became a little scared.
“You have a real gift,” Owen said. “You’re, like, brilliant.”
Owen babbled for a long time, about astral projection and ESP, how Jason was picking up signals from Owen’s own psychic powers, which had obviously been doing the broadcasting. Owen left that night full of plans and experiments, vindicated in his beliefs.
Jason sat on the bed after Owen left, thinking hard. He had no explanation for what he’d done but he knew he hadn’t faked it. He couldn’t believe, but he couldn’t deny either.
The boot lay on the bed. His father’s boot. He set it in his lap and closed his eyes.
Nothing. Empty darkness. He put his hands on the thing, on the slick snakeskin, feeling the cool of it, the roughness of the heel, the weight…
He wasn’t breathing. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t open his eyes, and he was suffocating. He was glued to the bed, his hands on the boot. Then he broke the surface of the water (the water?) and took a great gasping breath. His hand pounded at the window of the sinking car. He felt water up his nose. Then he coughed and gagged and…
His eyes flew open and he hurled the boot at the wall. Downstairs, Charley yipped. Eliza called out a question and he answered automatically.
“I’m fine.”
But he wasn’t. The next day at school he avoided Owen. He ditched the one class they shared. Owen came up to him in the hall, tugging his elbow. Jason turned and snapped the boy’s suspender, hard. He regretted it immediately. Owen wept, from wide hurt eyes. They didn’t speak to each other for a week, but then Jason gave Owen his only copy of Spider-Man #298 (the first appearance of Venom), and all was forgiven.
But it was never the same. The act was breaking up. Over Christmas, Owen went with his family to Indiana, and the time apart sealed the deal.
Jason never spoke of the brown paper bag to anyone. He never admitted to himself that he’d seen his father’s death. He never tried to repeat the experiment, to grab something, feel it under his hands, read it. Whatever that meant. No. Never again.
He wore his gloves far into the following spring.
As he pulled his dress shoe back on and tied it, the whole episode came roaring back to memory, like the tug of conscience, or a past regret. Groucho was grinning, but Jason didn’t return the smile. He didn’t know the secret word, and he didn’t want to know it. He stood, and shuffled back to the house.
The House that Shouted.
8 the proposal
Eliza returned around six thirty to find Jason in his room, reading comics. She told him that he’d made a wonderful impression, that Hadewych had gushed about what a bright boy he was, how clever, how polite. The incident at the bistro had, apparently, gone unreported. Jason couldn’t help but feel grateful.
She inspected him, deciding that he looked nice, but she licked a napkin and was working on his ears when the high note of a car horn announced that Mr. Van Brunt was waiting.
#
Hadewych rented an apartment by Patriots Park, the top floor of a multifamily building. Valerie was his landlord. But, he said with a twinkle, he “doesn’t pay her in cash.” Valerie blushed at that. She lived downstairs.
Hadewych shared his place with one other person, his son Zef.
Another weird Dutch name. Ugh.
“He’s about your age. He’s out with his girlfriend tonight. You’ll meet him at school on Monday.”
“Monday?” Jason pushed his hair out of his eyes.
Yes, of course. Hadn’t he guessed where they’d run off to? They’d driven Eliza down to Sleepy Hollow High so she could enroll Jason. That’s why she made herself up, Jason realized. Not to make an impression on her guests, but because she was going to see the administrators. He felt better.
They didn’t go upstairs when they arrived. They went into Valerie’s apartment on the ground floor.
Jason stopped at the entrance, wondering.
The place was a fortress. Valerie twisted and fastened a half dozen bolts, chains and locks behind them. The walls of the cavernous space were brick, though they had looked like wood from the outside. The downstairs windows bore metal shutters that could be shut tight. There was a gun safe against one wall containing four rifles. Along another wall stretched a long shelving unit stocked with freeze-dried food and camping supplies.
Yet the place was lovely. A fringed lamp hung from a tall stem-like support, casting a crème-colored glow. Beneath it, a chenille blanket draped the arm of a pale green chaise lounge. Delicate antique furniture gathered around a low round table. He saw crystals, fashion magazines, and a stem vase with a single rose. In an octagonal side room Jason saw a grand piano scattered with sheet music. The place was a mixture of the elegant and the industrial, like Valerie herself.
She served dinner in a dining room patterned after a Chinese box. Not freeze-dried survival food, either. She had cooked for a special occasion, presenting the group with goose in onion sauce, a juicy ham, fresh-baked bread with honey, apple tart and pumpkin pie. Afterward she produced an antique silver coffee pot and tray with sugar, amaretto and cream, and invited her guests into the parlor.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Jason saw what looked to be a clothesline or length of twine encircling the room; on it, the onionskin-paper rubbings that he and Eliza had made on their cemetery adventure hung like carnival banners.
The four nestled into high-backed armchairs around a fine New England fireplace trimmed with panels of slate. The fire quivered and shadows danced. Hadewych raised a glass.
“To Jason,” he said.
“To Jason,” the ladies repeated.
“He has been an extraordinarily good sport through what must have been a trying time. We are all sorry that you’ve been ‘out-of-the-loop’ and let us begin by apologizing to you.”
“Okay,” Jason said, embarrassed.
“The three of us,” said Hadewych, “have been working on this project for so long, it was easy to forget how strange and sudden it would seem to you. I hope we can help you understand.”
He produced a leather satchel from beside the hearth, opened it, and took out a piece of paper encased in a plastic sleeve like one of Jason’s
comic books.
“This letter was left to me by my parents. Mother’s name was Christina Greyfield. My father was Jonus Van Brunt. You can see his tombstone here.” He indicated one of the rubbings. Jason could barely see the date of 1972. Jonus had died when Hadewych was just a boy.
“Jonus Van Brunt received this letter from Tonnis Van Brunt, short for Anthony. He was my grandfather.”
The next rubbing was confidently made, the dates clear. 1898 to 1950.
“Before him, it came from his father Nicholas, who received it from his father Cornelius, who received it from his father Dylan.”
These three rubbings grew rougher. The stones had weathered unevenly. On the last, the name DYLAN VAN BRUNT was arrogant and angry-looking; a hollow-eyed face scowled above the lettering.
“We don’t have a rubbing for Dylan’s father, Abraham – the author of this letter. Yes, Brom again. Born August 31st, 1780. Died November 22nd, 1850. He’s buried in the Van Brunt tomb in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, alongside his father, Hermanus. It’s not marked anymore, thank heavens, or else Legend fanciers would have chipped it down to nothing for souvenirs. But I could show it to you, if you wanted. The tomb is impressive, though a shadow of what it was once, when the Van Brunts were rich and the cemetery was young.”
Get to the point, Jason thought.
“A little more amaretto, Val, and warm it up.” He handed Valerie his cup. “Why don’t you read the letter for us now?”
He presented the paper to Jason. Eliza adjusted the dimmer on a lamp at his elbow, providing light. Her knobby old hand patted his arm. The letter had been written on parchment, the words in rusty ink across the vellum, spidery, difficult to make out.
“I can’t read this.”
“Of course not. Hardly anyone can. The Van Brunts have always written to each other in Old Dutch. Sorry. The translation is behind.”
Jason turned the page over and found a piece of white cardstock taped to the outside.
“November 10th, 1850.”
“Twelve days before he died,” said Hadewych.
Sleepy Hollow: Rise Headless and Ride Page 6